Founder
James Swan
Founder — Seattle, Washington
James Swan is the founder of Black Swan Group LLC, an independent product and engineering studio based in Seattle. Over a career of approximately two decades, he has worked across embedded systems, real-time operating systems, avionics, Android, cloud services, consumer electronics, wearable devices, Alexa Smart Home, and the Matter interoperability standard.
James's work has repeatedly crossed conventional engineering boundaries. He has owned low-level platform software, device security, boot and recovery systems, over-the-air updates, mobile integration, cloud monitoring, web tools, distributed services, and connected-device architectures. He has also led projects requiring close coordination among engineering, product, design, operations, and external standards organizations.
Through Black Swan Group, James is applying that experience to programmable software services, owner-controlled infrastructure, durable hardware, and other markets where existing products have accepted unnecessary complexity, lock-in, or disposability.
Technical domains
- Avionics and satellite communications
- Embedded systems and real-time operating systems
- Android and mobile applications
- Cloud services and distributed systems
- Wearable devices
- Alexa Smart Home
- Matter and interoperability standards
Career timeline
2003–2008
B.S. Computer Engineering, minor in Computer Science
Clemson University
Combined hardware-oriented computer engineering with software-oriented computer science — a pairing that became the recurring structure of his career.
2006–2007
Cooperative education
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center
Early government and defense-related technical systems work in Charleston, South Carolina.
2008–2013
Software Engineer
Harris Corporation / L3Harris
Became the primary owner of a mission-critical avionics storage system and rewrote its storage-controller path to reach the performance limits of the underlying hardware. Also built cockpit mapping software and modernized a legacy satellite-communications command-and-control system, working across VxWorks, Green Hills Integrity, and board support packages.
2013–2017
Software Engineer, Device Demos
Amazon
Led an end-to-end Smart Home retail demonstration that choreographed Echo, Fire TV, lighting, audio, thermostat, and display systems through a reusable scripting model, alongside retail device-management systems for Fire Tablet, Kindle, and Fire Phone.
2017–2022
Senior Software Engineer, Halo and wearable devices
Amazon
Joined as the first device-software engineer and helped establish the embedded platform, security, lifecycle, and monitoring foundations used across the Halo Band, Halo View, and Echo Loop.
2022–early 2026
Senior Software Engineer, Alexa Smart Home and Matter
Amazon
Worked across Alexa Smart Home and Matter at the mobile, hub, cloud, and interoperability layers, including Android and Java/Kotlin integration, commissioning, connected-device architecture, and translation between device models, alongside the Connectivity Standards Alliance ecosystem.
Early 2026
Founder
Black Swan Group
Founded Black Swan Group to apply that cross-stack experience to overlooked problems in software, infrastructure, hardware, and consumer products.
Engineering philosophy
James treats complexity as a cost that has to be justified, not a sign of sophistication. Two decades of moving between hardware constraints, embedded firmware, mobile platforms, and cloud services taught him that the most valuable work usually sits at the boundary between layers — where an explicit, well-modeled interface replaces months of accumulated workarounds. That discipline, not any single language or framework, is what he considers his actual specialty.
Black Swan Group
James founded Black Swan Group in early 2026 to apply that cross-layer discipline to problems he could own end to end, as engineer, product owner, and operator, rather than as one layer of a larger organization. The studio's portfolio spans software, infrastructure, and physical products deliberately: the shared thread is the operating philosophy, not a single industry.